Faced however with a small grey-haired lady at the door, my natural inclination to be a law abiding citizen and respectful to my elders had me resignedly leaning against the door post to answer impertinent questions while my coffee grew cold in the living room. As we went through the census form though, I became even more disgusted than usual with the entire procedure. This mostly stemmed from my interlocutor asking me: A) What sex I was "assigned" at birth, and B) if I was now a different gender than the sex I was assigned at birth. "That's ridiculous." I said. The census taker said rather apologetically, "We have to ask that now." I told her that, since I was born a female, obviously I still was one and left it at that. There's no point in hectoring an elderly woman who obviously knows she's asking stupid questions, but probably needs the job. Why else would anyone go door-to-door, harassing census slackers like me? Unless of course they're just nosey parkers, a possibility I don't discount. In weaker moments I can acknowledge that there is some information that it's probably useful for the government to have, but what the dickens is the use of it if people can just decide to answer the questions willy-nilly, according to whatever one feels like that day? I might identify as a wealthy jet-setter with dual citizenship and a vacation home on the French Riviera, but that doesn't make it so, and saying it would just screw up the data. Which, full disclosure, crossed my mind... oh, not to actually do it- that would be dishonest- but to wonder how often people actually do skew the results. I'm sure it's probably against some law to give false answers, unless of course if you're a woman saying you're a dude- or vice versa- in which case it's encouraged. So much for accuracy; the whole census is a waste of time if people are just going to answer the questions according to their feelings rather than facts. Speaking of facts, being asked what sex I was "assigned" at birth just proves that the Liberal government has thrown science out the window; why should I take anything put out by this deeply unserious government seriously?
As I thought over the incident later (drinking my reheated coffee) I realized that it reminded me of an amusing chapter in Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter in which Mr. Edwards comes to visit. Over dinner he tells them how a government agent came out to his claim to do a tax assessment for the following year. Mr. Edwards gives the man a long list of mostly fictional possessions because he sees how happy it makes the fellow to contemplate the large amount of tax revenue which will be derived from it all. Mr. Edwards is actually clearing out and heading West, so will be long gone before the bill actually comes due and doesn't care how high he drives it up with his tall tales:
“I’m aiming to go far west in the spring,” he said. “This here country, it’s too settled-up for me. The politicians are a-swarming in already, and ma’am if’n there’s any worst pest than grasshoppers it surely is politicians. Why, they’ll tax the lining out’n a man’s pockets to keep up these here county-seat towns! I don’t see nary use for a county, nohow. We all got along happy and content without ’em.
“Feller come along and taxed me last summer. Told me I got to put in every last least thing I had. So I put in Tom and Jerry, my horses, at fifty dollars apiece, and my oxen yoke, Buck and Bright, I put in at fifty, and my cow at thirty-five.
“‘Is that all you got?’ he says. Well, I told him I’d put in five children I reckoned was worth a dollar apiece.
“‘Is that all?’ he says. ‘How about your wife?’ he says.
“‘By Mighty!’ I says to him. ‘She says I don’t own her and I don’t aim to pay no taxes on her,’ I says. And I didn’t.”
“Why, Mr. Edwards, it is news to us that you have a family,” said Ma. “Mr. Ingalls said nothing of it.”
“I didn’t know it myself,” Pa explained. “Anyway, Edwards, you don’t have to pay taxes on your wife and children.”
“He wanted a big tax list,” said Mr. Edwards. “Politicians, they take pleasure a-prying into a man’s affairs and I aimed to please ’em. It makes no matter. I don’t aim to pay taxes. I sold the relinquishment on my claim and in the spring when the collector comes around I’ll be gone from there. Got no children and no wife, nohow.”